Some analysts said they did not expect Trump to rescind the executive orders that relaxed the half-century embargo on Cuba since Castro came to power, citing the pro-business lobby in the Republican party and Trumps own commercial instincts.

However, conservative Cuban Americans including Mauricio Claver-Carone, a hardline member of Trumps transition team have said that the regime run by Ral Castro is just as repressive as his brothers, and argue that some or all of the sanctions should be reinstated.

Since taking the helm Ral has cemented his own personal power, maintained the hegemony of the Communist party and laid to rest the once widely held belief that Cuba would implode with the death of Fidel.

Ral is a transitional president between the old guard and the future and in that sense he has performed well. He has kept the country stable, said Volker Skierka, a Fidel biographer and Cuba expert.

In his later years, Fidel expressed his unease with some of these developments in critical commentaries in Granma, the Communist party newspaper, but his influence was waning and what was left of the revolution had already moved on.

US policymakers have been forced to abandon their once cherished poof moment theory that the communist partys grip on power would slip without Fidel. As much as we wish otherwise, I dont see it happening, said one US diplomat in the region.

European diplomats went further. We wont see a huge shift of Cuban politics after Fidels death. More significant would be if Ral dies, because he put his leadership on the line for reform.

Ral has released most political prisoners and allowed prominent critics such as Rosa Mara Pay and Yoani Snchez to travel abroad. But organised opposition at home is still often met with arrests and beatings.

Rals biggest test is raising living standards for the islands 11.2 million people. The average monthly wage is less than 15 ($20), obliging people to scrabble for decent food and basics such as soap, and there are crippling shortages of housing and transport.

The economy is whats most on peoples minds, said Susan Kaufman Purcell, director of the Centre for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami.

Ral has studied Vietnam and China as models of communist parties which have retained control while freeing their economies. He has trimmed the vast state bureaucracy and laid off hundreds of thousands of workers, saying the old system was bloated and unsustainable.

Cuba learned the hard way not to become too dependent on a single sponsor. In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the islands economy was in tatters and many of its citizens struggled to feed themselves. Ever the pragmatist, Ral has spent his years as president hedging against this possibility by nurturing ties with China, Russia, Latin America, the European Union and even the US.

But nobody should mistake that for a shift of ideology. In his 2016 speech to the party congress, Ral echoed his brothers calls for unity in the face of capitalist US influence.

But for the moment, his inner circle is dominated by octogenarians. One reason for the hesitancy is younger colleagues lack the cachet of involvement in the 1959 revolution that overthrew the Batista dictatorship, another pillar of legitimacy. Without that whiff of history they are just unelected officials.

Nonetheless, the Cuban president has said he will stand down as president in 2018 and his first vice-president, Miguel Daz-Canel, is widely tipped to assume his mantle. Fidels death expected to be more of an emotional than political earthquake for Cuba is unlikely to change that, but it could make change easier for the next generation of Cuban leaders.